


The Yellow Song

by RobberBaroness



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, The King in Yellow - Robert W. Chambers
Genre: Epistolary, F/M, Lovecraftian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-14
Updated: 2015-03-14
Packaged: 2018-03-17 18:09:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3539078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobberBaroness/pseuds/RobberBaroness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last testimony of Christine Daae before her performance of The King in Yellow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Yellow Song

My name is Christine, and I am a sinner of the most terrible sort.  Before the night is over, I shall have participated in a grand act of destruction worthy of the operatic stage, and although I cannot stop myself, I also find that I have no wish to.  Raoul, I pray that you have stayed away, as I begged you to!  Meg, your mother serves the Yellow Phantom faithfully- surely he will have found a way to spare you in return?  Carlotta, how you will bless me for taking the role of Cassilda from you when you read tomorrow’s papers!  Shall any of you read this letter, or will it be swept away with the rest of the Opera?  I do not know, and perhaps I never shall.

How can it be that our production has come this far?  How can it be that none of us ever stopped to question the perversity of the text?  I fear the play itself will be forgotten when this evening’s events are done, and this is wrong- if so many of us will suffer for a work of art, let it be one that is remembered.

(The King in Yellow is a revenge tragedy, a blood-soaked Elizabethan form set to the sweetest notes any ear has ever heard.  It begins like a fairy tale, with the captive ladies Cassilda and Camilla held hostage by a wicked usurper, who offers them freedom only if they will wed into his line.  Camilla succumbs out of fear, but Cassilda cannot bring herself to give any kind of answer, as the usurper’s court is filled with the most blasphemous of doings and the wickedest of plots. She sings of a paradise to which she wishes to escape, and at the height of her inner turmoil, calls out to the spirit of the murdered king to forgive her, and to spare her his judgement if she succumbs.)

If my father had not raised me on fairy tales, perhaps I would have been less susceptible to them.  If he had not told me the angel of music visited and taught the most deserving artists, perhaps I would have been harder to sway.  But what is done is done- I cannot cast the blame on those who have long since gone to rest.

I was so alone without my father, so susceptible to predation.  I wanted to believe that an angel would come to keep me company, and so it took little effort for me to be convinced.  And yet, how could it have been otherwise?  The way I felt in the Yellow Phantom’s presence filled me with reverence, his voice with desire, and the way he moved me to sing felt as if I was being crafted into an instrument of the most holy purpose.

Meeting you again, Raoul, very nearly saved me.  If you had taken me away the night we were first reunited, there might have still been hope for my soul.  But I sent you away and left myself vulnerable to my teacher, the being whose approval I so desperately craved.  He took me into his arms that night and showed to me that he was no mere angel or spirit, but something of a higher order.  In his embrace, I felt for the edges of the mask he seemed to wear, and found there were none...and from then on I knew I was lost.

(Within the opera, it is love which undoes poor Camilla at last.  A young knight tries to spirit her away from the decadent castle, but the duke to whom she has been betrothed runs him through with a saber.  At the grand masquerade thrown to celebrate the double wedding of the captive ladies- for yes, Cassilda has at last been prevailed upon to wed her captor- the groom brags of his crime, and Camilla throws herself off the balcony rather than face a marriage to him.

The masquerade had earlier been disturbed by a guest clad in yellow, who offered to tell Cassilda the secrets of the court...but the audience has likely put him out of their mind at this point.  They have likely also forgotten that the king the usurper murdered was said to favor yellow.)

I would do anything for you, Raoul...anything but what you have asked.  Perhaps the Yellow Phantom has mesmerized me, but all I know is that I must serve him.  His music must be heard.  His masterpiece must be performed to its grand and bloody conclusion.  Though I know it will bring about death to those who listen, I must sing Cassilda’s yellow song.

(When Cassilda learns of her sister’s death, she no longer has any reason to cooperate with her captor.  Instead, she sings to the assembled wedding guests- sings a song of hate and murder, for within it she reveals all that the King in Yellow has told her.  She sings of which nobles have been behind which plots, which hand grasps which dagger, and sends the crowd into a violent fury.  They turn upon each other, knowing they have no true allies, and the wicked bridegrooms are torn apart by their underlings.  The castle is destroyed by the mob, while Cassilda sings so sweetly and the King in Yellow looks on from a distance.

Does Cassilda survive the finale?  The play is a bit ambiguous in that regard.)

What I feel is not love- there is no word the human tongue can utter to describe it.  The Yellow Phantom pulls at me as if I were a marionette, but the dance he sets me to is one that fills me with feelings of freedom and joy.  Oh Raoul!  I love you, and in another life we could have been happy together!  If it comforts you, consider that the Christine you know died when she first sang her patron’s notes, and all that remains is a wicked siren.

How I wish that were true, and that I did not grieve for what I am about to do.  But no art can come without suffering, and from my sorrow and my love will come the greatest and most terrible art the Opera has ever known.

**Author's Note:**

> The idea of the cursed play being a revenge tragedy comes from the SCP's "The Hanged King's Tragedy".


End file.
